


Bandom Rarepair Ficlet Amnesty

by proleptic_fancy



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, The Damned Things
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 01:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12002169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proleptic_fancy/pseuds/proleptic_fancy
Summary: A collection of crossposted prompt responses and goofy AU snippets that can't quite stand alone.Fandom and pairing tags to be added only - see chapter summaries for additional information.





	1. The Only One You Can't Ignore

**Author's Note:**

> Kicking things off right with the most self-indulgent thing I'm willing to put my name to!
> 
> The Damned Things, Joe/Keith, pre-slash.
> 
> Written for the prompt '100 Words of Noodling.'

It takes him a couple of days in California, between the jet lag and the hangover—which, jesus fucking christ, no wonder it seemed like he couldn’t remember the last time the two of them partied until dawn; he must have blacked the whole thing out to protect himself—before Keith starts to wonder if this is what a midlife crisis looks like.

Sad as it is, he almost prefers that explanation to any other reason he can think of for why he’s here, heeling like a dog to a whistle. For why he hopped on a one-way flight across the country with nothing but a week’s worth of clothes and a notebook full of half-cocked ideas, a hundred ugly phrases about inevitability that he can only hear in a voice that’s not his own.

For why he’s still got the message on his phone. Why the only appeal to his dignity he’s got left is that it wasn’t the first one that hooked him in, but the second: _Come on, asshole. I don’t want anyone but you._

“Play a little,” he says, the first morning they remember they’re supposed to be working, adds, “It doesn’t have to be the stuff you sent me before,” when he catches the wild-eyed, too-sober-for-this-shit panic that flashes across Joe’s face—fuck, for a second there he looks so _young_. “Just, you know. Do whatever. Pretend I’m not here.”

He wants to believe this little bout of writer’s block is just a case of professional jitters, a side effect of working with somebody new, same as the stiff set to Joe’s shoulders when he hunches down over his guitar. And he can believe it just fine as long as he’s only listening, eyes closed or staring down at the blank page in his lap, turning his pen over and over in his hand.

Warming up turns into idle noodling, half scales and arpeggios slowly taking shape as the bones of riffs Keith almost recognizes. Still, he doesn’t risk a glance up until Joe can glide past a dropped note without breaking his concentration to mutter, “ _fuck_ ,” dark under his breath.

It’s worth the wait, because Joe’s too caught up, too oblivious to stop, self-conscious, when Keith stares. His head is bowed, face hidden behind a curtain of hair, but his posture is finally relaxed, as comfortable as it should be here in his own home, and his long fingers move steady and sure on the strings.

Keith wonders if he’ll have to blame the way he’s sweating bullets all the sudden on his maybe-midlife crisis, too, or if he can settle for last night’s tequila and the LA sunshine. Either way, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s caught in the cross-hairs, that whatever happens next was set in motion the moment he stepped onto that airplane, and that all he can do is hope nothing inside him gets splorched into jelly when the trigger is pulled.

Joe stops for a second to come up for air, as it were, smiles like he’s shy or something—which anybody who’s ever met the guy should know is a pack of lies—when he catches Keith’s eye, and apparently this middle-school bullshit is contagious, because then it’s Keith’s turn to duck his head.

It’s not a flash of inspiration that gets him to finally write something down, so much as an urgent need to look busy when Joe starts to play again—still snickering at him, the smug son of a bitch—and a vague sense that idle hands really might be the devil’s playthings in this particular case.

The words stare back at him when he’s finished: a sharp, black confession in his own messy hand.

_Don’t ask me if I know what I’m doing. I don’t._

He’s doomed.


	2. Now there is nothing between us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete's pretty sure whoever came up with this whole binding ritual blood magic bullshit was trying to spite him personally and specifically.
> 
> Patrick's pretty sure this whole thing is a really bad idea, but he's here to help anyway.
> 
> FOB, Pete/Andy, Pete+Patrick, more details below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> State-Mandated Ghost Hunting AU!
> 
> Prompt from [this](http://allofthefeelings.tumblr.com/post/131680478195/i-just-had-the-worlds-most-amazing-fandom-dream) Tumblr post.
> 
> Title from Cirice by Ghost B.C.

You learned to take a lot of things in stride when your best friend talked to ghosts.

Like, it had been pretty goddamn weird the first time he saw Pete walk into a wall mid-sentence because he forgot he couldn’t follow his new invisible friend, but as it turned out, that was just the mild shit, and by now, Patrick had pretty much seen it all.

Take your bleeding statues, for example. Those were always a big hit with the non-corporeal crowd, whether it was out of the eyes or the hands or somewhere a little more creative, like that one really uncomfortable time at the Art Institute that gave Joe nightmares for a week. Or possession, another classic, like when they got called in to deal with some poor kid painting the walls with pea soup. Not throwing up, oh no—all that Linda Blair stuff was _so_ twentieth-century, apparently. 

Painting. With a brush.

Pete had been kind of bummed out when Andy took care of that one. He always did have a soft spot for the tortured artist-types, even the ones who weren’t nearly as funny as they thought they were.

Fuck, Patrick had survived the Great Naked Seance Incident of 2004. Supernatural or _au naturel_ , nothing phased him anymore.

Which was why, when he walked in on Pete loading up a blender full of…something, wearing nothing but a long, black robe and an expression of grim determination, he didn’t even have to break his stride to ask, “What the fuck are you doing and why does it smell like V8?”

Between his dangling sleeves and a rogue elbow close behind, Pete nearly took out his whole set-up when he jerked around, startled.

“Fuck, dude! Knock, will you?” he snapped, as if he didn’t let himself into Patrick’s apartment at three in the morning on a weekly basis, and Patrick was still deciding whether it was worth it to bring that up, or if he should skip straight to reminding Pete that _he_ was the one who’d asked him to come over here in the first place, when— 

“Wait, hold on, don’t tell me you forgot,” Pete said, eyes huge. “It’s the big night! I need you here to make sure I don’t freak out and try to climb out the window or fucking faint like an asshole or some other stupid shit. You know, if Andy actually shows up.”

There was no stopping Pete from freaking out, was the thing. Pete had been in more-or-less a constant state of freaking out since, after setting what had to be a new world record in not getting to the fucking point, he’d confessed to Patrick that he was thinking about popping the question. As it were.

At this point, it was all a matter of damage control.

“Don’t climb out the window. Your fire escape’s a fucking deathtrap.” Which should have gone without saying. And yet. “And of course Andy’s gonna show, are you kidding? Twenty bucks says he already called Joe and they’re having this exact conversation at his place. Relax.”

Okay, maybe not this _exact_ conversation. Because Patrick had thought he finally had his head wrapped around what Pete was trying to accomplish here, but the fruit was new.

“Seriously, though, what’s with all the tomatoes?”

Pete huffed out a long-suffering sigh, said, “Look, the whole point of this stupid binding ceremony is to prove my devotion, isn’t it?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“My devotion to the guy who makes dumb grr faces at my boots every time he thinks I’m not paying any attention,” Pete went on—which, okay? Maybe that was a thing? Patrick couldn’t say he’d ever noticed, but whatever. “—so obviously it’ll be fine if I just skip right down to the butcher shop and ask for a couple of buckets of blood like everybody else.”

Oh. Right.

He punched the ‘Liquify’ button with more hostility than Patrick felt the blender had earned in all of this, ignored the faint red spatter it threw across his cheek where he hadn’t bothered to seal the lid all the way.

“I have disemboweled, like, a hundred tomatoes for this shit,” he said. “And I know how lame that sounds, but hear me out here—these little assholes?” He pulled a fresh tomato from the massive pile of the things on the counter, held it up to show him. “They were still _alive_ when I peeled all their skin off and shoved them in there, and that is way more hardcore than some stupid cow’s blood that’s been sitting in a fridge for days, and this is totally going to work.”

His voice cracked on that last, desperate phrase, and Patrick held his arms out without a word, let Pete crumple forward into him, pressing tight against the tension knotted in his back until his ragged breathing began to settle.

“Fuck, this wasn’t—you weren’t—” Pete shook his head, tucked his face down into the crook of Patrick’s neck, so he felt it resonate low against his skin when Pete said, “It’s just, he told me he was a problem child, too, could never keep a partner more than a couple of months at a time before he moved down here and they stuck him with me. If this doesn’t work, if the bond unravels—”

Not for the first time, Patrick wished he’d ever taken to magic better than a cat took to water. Maybe then he’d have an answer that could ease Pete’s fears. Instead, he had to stick with what he did know.

He took a step back, kept his hands firm on Pete’s shoulders—good practice keeping him upright for tonight, if nothing else—and looked him dead in the eye.

“He won’t leave.” 

Pete blinked at him.

“I can’t pretend I understand what any of this blood stuff _means_ , but it’s not like I haven’t seen the way you guys work without it. He keeps all the ghosts you piss off from kicking your shit in because it’s the right thing to do.” He tried to rock Pete back onto his heels, grinning. “And also because he’s crazy about you. He’s going to come over here and find out you disemboweled a hundred tomatoes for him so you could get magic gay married, and you won’t be able to get rid of him for all the paperwork in Springfield, you terrified idiot.”

That got Pete to relax a little, thank god. Even if he did need to take a second just to breathe, head dropped and eyes closed, before he pulled away.

“Okay, but give me a little credit, here. It’s not _all_ tomato juice.” He tugged up the sleeve of his robe to show off the fresh, white bandage on his arm. 

Which, Patrick wasn’t an expert on any of this supernatural shit, but in his valiant attempt to be more supportive and understanding than he was sure he actually felt about this whole ancient blood ritual business, he’d been doing his homework, and he was pretty sure that was a big fucking deal.

“Because you’re right,” Pete said, for what might have been the first time ever. “Andy’s awesome, but you know what would make him even more awesome? A giant fuck-off scythe. Made of magic. It’s gonna be fucking badass.”

“So are you gonna swoon the first time he jumps in front of you to cut a ghost in half with it?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Pete nodded, some of his usual cheerful enthusiasm already bleeding through the worst of the panic. “Hey, you think if I slipped the guy down at the IDOS office fifty bucks, he’d find us some wannabe fashion critic ghost with a vendetta against shirts? I want to make sure our first time is special.”

Patrick didn’t dignify that with a response, just grabbed the nearest tomato and Pete’s little silver dagger and got to peeling. Maybe it was okay that he didn’t quite get it. Maybe he didn’t need to. Andy was a good dude, and he made Pete happy, and blood magic or bullshit vegan tomato magic or whatever the fuck else the great beyond was going to throw at them, maybe that was good enough.


End file.
